


We know what we are, but know not what we may be

by Lexigent



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Bloodletting, F/M, Incest, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 18:26:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21286169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/pseuds/Lexigent
Summary: Laertes and Ophelia from their mother's death to their father's and beyond that. Modern AU.
Relationships: Hamlet/Ophelia, Laertes/Ophelia (Hamlet)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Stage of Fools 2019





	We know what we are, but know not what we may be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thinkatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thinkatory/gifts).

“Look, mum, my kite’s really high!”  
Laertes was squinting against the September sun, holding tightly onto the line winders. The light reflected off his golden hair. His kite, a simple delta-shaped plastic with a printed bird design, stood in the sky, motionless. He could feel it dragging at the winders in his hands as he carefully released more line, prompting the kite to fly higher and higher.  
“Fee, look!”  
His enjoyment carried over to his sister, who was still too small to have a kite of her own. "It's gonna touch the sun!" she exclaimed, jumping up and down.  
“Careful you don’t lose it,” their mother said from behind them with a laugh in her voice.  
“Of course, mum,” he said and unwound more line.

When Laertes thinks of his mother now, this is what he remembers: a tall woman, her long blonde hair wafting behind her, tousled by the wind. He remembers her long black coat, soft and fragrant, the lining a patchwork of oddments from her dresses.

“Lemme hold it,” Ophelia said behind him. Laertes turned to her and wiped his hair out of his eyes. "What's the magic word?" he teased. Ophelia rolled her eyes. "Lemme hold it, please, Laertes."

He gripped the line tightly just above the winders on both sides, then guided Ophelia's hands to hold the winders fast, hold her thumb on the line just below where he was holding it.  
Their mother placed a hand on Ophelia’s shoulder as if to support her, but Ophelia shrugged it off. “I’m strong enough,” she insisted. Laertes felt his mother’s hand on his shoulder - a presence he trusted, always, to make everything well.  
And he let go of the line.  
Ophelia shrieked with delight when she felt the kite’s pull. She jumped a little and the kite moved her forward. She jumped again and moved forward again. “I can fly,” she shrieked and kept jumping.

\---

Laertes and his father return to the house in black suits. The house is quiet around them, Laertes can hear every single one of their steps falling.  
He wants to call out for his mum, wants to hear her voice. It hasn’t sunk in that she is dead, and yet - she is. He’s just come back from burying her.  
His father’s face is stone as he walks into the front room where Ophelia is sitting at the servant's feet. She's crying and confused. “Where’s mum?” she asks, and Laertes sees his father’s mask fall.  
“We just buried her body, darling,” Polonius says, his voice heavy with the emotions he’s trying not to show. “She’s in a better place.”  
A better place, Laertes thinks. But what could be better than open fields in autumn, than your own room in your own house, cool in the summer and hot with blazing fires in the winter? What could be better than the spring breeze? 

This is how he remembers his mother: forever out of doors, forever exploring beyond the boundaries of the king’s lands, of their house.

After the funeral, their father only leaves the house to work. He was like that before she was gone, and he’s even more so now. Laertes and Ophelia share tutors for most of their subjects, except Ophelia takes music with a lady who plays the violin and has tresses upon tresses of raven black hair and makes the whole house smell of cloves and patchouli when she comes. Laertes takes fencing with a bald young man with scars all along his forearms.

They’re allowed to go out, of course, but it’s strange without someone to explain the patterns of the flight of birds, the way plants can heal you or hurt you, the sounds of the different animals around them. Even in bright daylight, Laertes is lost.

Ophelia likes wandering aimlessly and more than once, her brother has to save her from falling into bodies of water because she’s staring at the reflections and the dragonflies too much for her own good.

\---

Laertes grows muscles from fencing and Ophelia grows knowledge from her books. When she isn't reading, she is filling the house with music,

When he is fifteen, their father decides it’s time Laertes had his own bedroom. He doesn’t like leaving this one - they’ve put a lot of work into it. He's stuck photos of famous sports people all around his bed and he's constructed towers and walls from whatever construction toy was the Christmas present that year.

Ophelia’s side is all spider webs and witching decoration, dried herbs and empty bottles, and a chemistry set that she’s acquired goodness knows how. She keeps bottles in her desk with labels in spidery writing and Laertes is never sure whether they’re actual poison or make-believe - Ophelia has been going places where he hasn't bothered or been able to follow, and sometimes she frightens him a little bit.

He moves into his new bedroom with a desire to make it his, but no materials to do so. The construction toys aren't really him anymore, he decides - he's fifteen now, almost an adult, and adults don't play with construction toys.  
He isn't sure adults play at all. But then again, he isn't sure what exactly it is that they do do.

On his first night alone, he has awful dreams.

It’s because I’m not here to protect you, Ophelia’s voice whispers in his dream, and he wakes up bewildered, thinking, but I’m the older one, it’s my job to protect you, not the other way around.

He asks her for a protection spell anyway, and for something he can put in his room that will remind him of her as he sleeps. She looks askance at him for that last request, as if to say, but I’m just down the hall, is it that bad?

But it is that bad, and the next night, he clutches a piece of fabric drenched in her perfume in his hand as he plays with himself, desperate and experimental. He whispers her name as he comes, falling over the edge with broken syllables falling unstoppably from his lips and making him jerk harder.

He feels guilty afterwards, tastes a bitterness in the back of his throat from anger at how wrong this is. But he can’t give it up after that. It’s the one thing that can soothe him through everything.

He’s sure he’s the only one of them who feels what he feels, but he can’t help searching for glimpses of desire in Ophelia’s eyes. He takes extreme care not to touch her, not to look at her in ways that are unnatural, but that only makes her think he’s somehow angry with her. Which he isn’t, he explains one night after a few weeks, when she finally snaps and asks. It’s just, maybe he’s having a bit of a blue phase after what’s happened.

It’s been a year, but Ophelia nods and says yeah, and he feels relieved and trapped at the same time.

She’s his little sister and he loves her so much, wants her so much, more than is normal or good, but she says yeah, I’ve felt the same lately, and we’ve been apart so much, can I have something of yours like you have something of mine, because I miss you sleeping on the other side of the room too.  
She likes the space, she’s at pains to add, but Laertes takes no time to give her one of his arm bandages, drenched in sweat and cologne and hundreds of hours of fencing practice.

He looks at her face as he gives it to her, but he can’t figure if that was actual desire he saw, or just him projecting. He curses inwardly and knows that tonight, he’ll give himself something special.

\----

There’s a new servant starting today - Laertes knows “servant” isn’t what they are but he can’t think what else to call them. They look after him and his sister in that they tidy and cook and then leave before midday and then they’re on their own until their father returns. They’ve not seen him at all this week.  
The next time they do see him, Fee’s wearing black wings and a tight black strappy tank top at the dinner table. Laertes watches their father closely and decides it’s clear he has noticed - how could he not, it’s not called attention-seeking behaviour for nothing - but he has absolutely no clue what to do.  
“Ophelia, a word,” he says as they get up from the table. Laertes and Ophelia both roll their eyes and Laertes gives his sister an encouraging quirk of the lip. She disappears while Laertes clears up the dishes.  
He’s drying up when she re-emerges from their father’s office. She winks at him and he winks back, finishes with the dishes and follows her to her room.  
It's the room that used to be theirs, but Ophelia has made it all hers. There are sigils and candles everywhere, bottles out in the open instead of in the desk drawer, a book of spells next to her laptop.  
She’s on the bed when he enters. He sits down on the edge. She squiggles over until her head is in his lap. He strokes her hair.  
They've done this so many times before it's almost a complete automatism for both of them.  
“What did he say?” he asks. Ophelia's eyes are full of mischief when she answers, her hand pressed lightly against his as it's carding through her hair.  
“He was very earnest about it all,” Ophelia says. “He went like this -” and she takes her brother’s hand between both of hers, then adopts a parody of their father's accent as she speaks - “‘are you doing okay? Is something wrong? I know I’m not home very often and I’m sorry about that. Is everything with the tutors okay? Did one of Laertes’... did someone hurt you?’”  
She laughs, squishes Laertes’ hand harder. Laertes laughs with her.  
“Did he actually say that?”  
Ophelia nods and smacks her lips. “So I said all is fine, it’s just that I’ve always liked birds and flying and black tops like this are really stylish apparently.”

She’s still holding his hand and he’s still letting her. They're both letting something happen - something that arises from the slight bulges of her breasts, the warmth of their hands, the way her gaze lingers on his shoulders, his pecs, his arms, as if she’s only just noticed the results of his fencing training.  
“So yeah,” she says with finality, lets go of his hands and jumps up in one fluid movement, and the moment passes.  
"I like it," he says on the way out, careful not to let his gaze meet hers, and touches the top of one of her wings before he leaves.  
His heart hammers all the way into his ears, and it doesn't stop even after he's fled to his own bedroom, even after he's indulged in his fantasies.There's something here that won't be released.

\---

Hamlet is in the centre of the room, drinking, flanked by two people they’ve never seen before. Friends from Hamlet’s boarding school, they reckon. Hamlet introduces them as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and Laertes shakes hands politely while Ophelia curtsies.

Laertes tries three times to have conversations, but they all falter soon enough. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as befits young men of their class, have travelled and seen much and beyond ‘that sounds amazing’ and ‘what was your favourite think about that trip?’ he does not have much to contribute. He remembers flying kites, all of a sudden - that glorious feeling of freedom - and how much he longs to go away to uni, be away from the suffocation of this place.  
He looks at Ophelia, who is struggling equally. She still has another year to go at least, and suddenly it hits him in the heart that she will be alone here, and he’ll be unable to protect her - to love her - to be with her -  
He blinks to clear the thought from his head. It’s a fantasy, it’s not what it appears to be, he's read enough Psychology Today articles to understand that it all just means that she’s important to him -  
“Sorry, you were saying?”  
Rosencrantz, who was talking, is so taken with the sound of his own voice that he hadn’t even realised Laertes was miles away in his thoughts.  
They leave the sorry affair after two hours, down too many glasses of wine. Laertes helps Ophelia button her coat as her finger can’t quite manage.

“What was he thinking?” Ophelia throws her her head back with laughter. “That was awful.”

They're back in Ophelia's bedroom. Ophelia has divested herself of her coat, but is still in her evening dress. She's taken off her boots and has moved onto removing her makeup. Laertes is next to her, feeling slightly uncomfortable in his suit but better for being in her presence.  
“Yes,” he replies, voice and thought soft from the alcohol. His eyes are irresistibly drawn to the long line of her neck, to her hair, golden in the soft light of the candles.  
Her gaze pops back up from being under a makeup wipe and meets his with unexpected force. His stomach lurches a little at the flash of desire in her eye. He closes his eyes and hopes the feeling will go away like it always has.  
When he opens his eyes, nothing has changed. She’s still sitting next to him, her body the one source of warmth in the room.  
She calmly finished the job, throws down the last wipe, now smeared with the pink residue of her foundation. Her lips quiver and then she lowers her gaze, reaches out with her hand, and links her pinky with his.  
He feels like he might be about to cry, breathless and choking on something behind his eyes. Any words he could say would get stuck in his throat, and words of resistance would be pointless anyway, for his body would betray them before they are spoken. “Fee,” he manages, and then she pulls him in by his pinky and he comes to her willingly, as he has wanted to for so long it’s part of his very flesh and bones.  
She nibbles on his lips, her hand in a tentative hold on the back of his head. His right hand lands on her hip, his left in her hair, then down the side of her face. She gets there first, tilts his head backwards, and his mouth opens to her. A jolt goes through him when her tongue touches his, makes him open wider, and then she sucks on his tongue and he loses it. Eyes closed, mouth and heart and all his soul’s desires open to her, he lets out a moan, clenches his hands tighter into her hair, around her hip. “Fee,” he breathes as she moves on top of him, “are you sure?”  
“I love you more than anyone,” she says by way of a reply and runs her hands underneath his shirt. He sighs contentedly and replies, “Same”.

This is what it’s all led up to, he thinks as he finally holds her naked body between his hands, as he enters her, gloriously slick and ready, first with his fingers and then - her on top of him, clenching around him.  
He murmurs her name into her hair, pulls her toward him, asks her to be still, knowing that if she moves, it will all be over for him far too soon.  
He finds the spot between her legs that makes her gasp and moan, rubs it between his fingers and watches and feels her reactions. “Say what feels good, Fee,” he breathes, and some time later, “Come for me” as her moans reach higher and higher pitches. Finally, she lets out a breathy “Yes,” and then she clenches around him, shudders in his arms, pants warm breath into his shoulders as he keeps stimulating her until she gently drags his arm away.  
He holds her upright then and locks eyes with her as he finally, finally begins to move within her. With her still clenching around him, it doesn’t take very long for him to reach the edge. He tumbles over and his body jerks in the grip of her thighs, and the tears he’s held at the back of his throat finally break free.  
“I love you more than anything,” he says through them. He cries for everyone he couldn’t save, for every time he wasn’t strong enough, for every time he’s wanted to do this and everything that’s held him back. For his weakness and her strength, and because he’s so grateful that something has finally gone his way, but his way - his desire - is wrong, twisted, unnatural.  
She holds his shaking body, says nothing for a very long time, until his sobs subside and he can look at her again and see her clearly, without the film of water across his vision.  
“I’m with you,” she finally whispers, and he laughs through his sobs and looks at her like he doesn’t quite know what he’s done to deserve her.

They both fear, above all, that their father is going to find out. But Fee, resourceful as ever, has a plan. "I'll just make him think I'm going out with Hamlet," she says when they talk about it one night. Laertes can't quite stifle the giggle that comes as an automatic reaction to a suggestion as ludicrous as this, but catches himself and asks, "And will you make Hamlet think that too?"  
"For good measure," Fee replies and grins all over her face.

\---

It’s the last day before he leaves for uni. They spent the night before it together, clinging to each other desperately, trying to leave as much of an impression on the other as possible. At one point he wound his bandage around her neck lightly and she pressed her shirt into his face. He smiles as he remembers how much he made her come, wanting to make the night truly special for her, and how much she let him, how open she was to everything he wanted to give her. He can still see it when he closes his eyes: him holding her from behind, inside her, and her hand on her clit, dancing lightly as she makes herself come while he fucks her.

Hamlet, it turns out, was easy enough for her to seduce, as young men with little female company and too much time and energy on their hands often are. Laertes knows things probably went quite far between them, but as long as it means they get to do this, he finds he doesn't care.

Ophelia gave him a bottle of one of her poisons last night by way of a parting gift. He drew his face into a smile but didn't quite understand it. She saw the puzzlement and laughed.  
"It's not deadly," she says, "but it is potent. If you take a bit of it every day, you'll be immune to it." And when his face still looked like a questionmark, she added in a voice that was close to breaking, "Because it's the only thing I can think of to give you that will make you stronger."

He opens his eyes again. It's daytime and the time for indulging in the sweetness of their trysts is later. He makes a show of telling Fee to steer clear of Hamlet, knowing their father is listening in on it from somewhere. Their father appears, proving him right, and insists on driving Laertes to the train station. On the drive, he gives a speech that he's given them a hundred times before as a way of saying goodbye to Laertes. Ophelia grins at him in the mirror. Their father can investigate that one until the cows come home, they’ve decided, and will give Ophelia something fun to do until she can see him again. He embraces her deeply and then they are gone, and he's left waiting for a train, feeling momentarily both lost and focussed.

\---

Fee texts him later to say their father has swallowed it hook, line and sinker - and then some. Apparently, Hamlet has been acting really strangely lately and no one knows why, and Polonius got it into his head that it must be because he's in love with Fee. "Because of course," she says, "and then he wanted me to stage a break-up and listen in, to prove it was that. Because someone who spent his whole youth expecting to inherit his dad's position and now his mum's gone and married someone else so he can't have it has no other reason to act out."

Laertes smiles at his phone. He can just imagine her tone of voice in this.

And then, two days later, she calls him in tears in the middle of the night to say Hamlet's wounded their father and can he come back, because he's in the hospital in critical condition and no one knows if he'll survive. 

Laertes doesn't remember how he got into the seat on the train, but he is there now, and hurtling towards Elsinore at top speed.

He finds a text from Fee on his phone. "He's gone. Acting mad apparently gets you out of being responsible for things," she says, "so that's what I'm going to do."

And in a strange way, that makes total sense to him. If their father succeeded in making the king and queen think that it was Fee breaking up with him that made Hamlet act the way he did - whatever that was, but it obviously included assaulting their dad - then it really isn't a stretch to see how they'll obviously blame her for this. Not for the first time in his life, Laertes wonders why people are like this, and not for the first time, Fee's answer to this question pops into his head automatically: "Because sexism."

He makes his way through an assembly of protesters outside Elsinore, who somehow have seized on his name as the one to sort all this out and take Claudius' position. He doesn't really understand why, but he also knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. He grips the poison bottle in his coat pocket, and hopes whatever Fee has come up with will be convincing.

She's amazing as fake madwoman and Laertes thinks she should go to acting school next year, and he almost believes she's actually drowned herself. His phone vibrating gently against the inside of his jeans pocket shows that not to be true.

\---

They meet at the water's edge, as per Fee's text. Fee's poison has stopped the blood of Hamlet as well as his mother and uncle, and that odd geeky fellow Hamlet hung about with was easy enough to convince that Hamlet had killed himself out of guilt over Polonius, and that his parents did the same out of grief. Laertes could almost see him typing up the story and sending it to the newspapers attempting to set the record straight. Laertes only feels the tiniest bit bad for the guy because, my God, was there ever a face more full of unrequited and unspoken infatuation with Hamlet.

He pulls his sister close, grabs her wet hair, and kisses her deeply, then takes her hand as they make their way back to Elsinore. "It's ours now if we want it," he says. It won't bring their father back and they both know it, but it makes him feel intensely powerful. "It should be yours, really," he says, more quietly. She doesn't respond but grips his hand tighter.

She never aimed too high, it turns out, when she wanted her kite to touch the sun.


End file.
